Building and growing a business is hard work! You have to build a strong team, nurture client relationships, be strategic, turn a profit … the list goes on.
You know what’s easier? Tearing your whole business apart. So, if you’d rather go that route, here are 10 ways you can destroy your business in no time at all.
1. Hire friends and relatives.
It’s not just that they aren’t really qualified, but the whole relationship is set up to fail from the start. You won’t be able to hold them accountable and the rest of the organization will assume they aren’t competent and that they receive special privileges.
2. Don’t keep any sort of customer/prospect database.
Why would you want any sort of list of customers and prospects? It’s so much easier just to start from scratch every time you want to publicize an event or a new product/service launch.
3. Work for cheap rates, discount to get more work.
It’s so much easier to get work when you set your rates low. If the client is hesitant, there’s nothing that gets them off the dime like a discount! So drop your rates, lower your prices and watch the sales roll in. Never mind that these types of clients will be nothing but annoying, penny-pinching micromanagers. It’s business!
4. Let clients push you around and don’t hold firm on any kind of scope.
You want to keep clients happy, so it’s best to just do what they ask — even though you know better, their ideas are sometimes dumb and you’re losing your shirt. But happy clients come back, right?
5. Desperately go after any kind of work that you can reasonably do.
Build a mobile app? You’ve never done it before, but surely you can figure it out since someone is willing to pay you to do it.
6. Stay in your office all the time.
Your team doesn’t want to talk to you. It’s not like you have experience or knowledge that can help them. The best thing to do is sit in your office, get your own work done and let them struggle.
7. Check your financials by looking at the balance in your checking account now and then.
Your business is small, so you pretty much know how much money is coming in and going out. What’s that? Payroll is next week?
8. Delegate work in as few words as you possibly can, ideally on your cell phone when you are walking under the L tracks.
It’s so inefficient tosit and go over every detail with your team members. They are smart; they’ll figure
it out.
9. Have a screaming meltdown when people don’t successfully read your mind and complete the task perfectly.
They’ve done it wrong AGAIN. Seriously, how many times do you have to scream at them before they get it right?
10. Start a new business every 18 months.
You’re getting impatient with your business’ growth, so you decide to start something much better … or at least newer… again.
So there it is. Destroying your business isn’t that hard. If you’ve got a good, healthy business, I bet you can turn it around in a couple of months. If your business is already rocky, these tips will have you bankrupt in a couple of weeks!
Photo credit: striatic
